The most carbon impactful consumer decision? Investigating people’s fertility intentions in times of a changing climate

Abstract

Having children is not typically identified as a concern in (macro)marketing research or practice. However, in a discipline that aims to “improve the human condition, and to sustain the world humans inhabit” (Schultz et al., 2021, p. 5), the factors that threaten human survival due to driving overconsumption and overpopulation, warrant exploration. Interestingly, some research (e.g., Murtaugh and Schlax, 2009; Wynes and Nicholas, 2017) has pointed towards “having one less child” as consumers’ main contribution to decreasing their carbon impact, an idea broadly received and discussed in popular news and social media (Helm, Kemper & White, 2021; Miller, 2018). About 33% of American men and women, aged 20 to 45, cited climate change as a reason to have fewer children (Miller, 2018). The current study investigates people’s decision (in a WEIRD context) to stay childfree because of climate change concerns from the perspective of resource consumption, as well as individual and collective wellbeing, central themes in Macromarketing discourse (DeQuero-Navarro, Stanton and Klein, 2020). Recognizing the unsustainability of the market system, some consumers consider their own impact, questioning if they should “produce another consumer” (Helm et al., 2021). Such societal dynamics affect marketing; if widespread, consumers’ decision to forgo childbearing can lead to serious implications for the viability of economic systems and societies. Even if only sporadic, consumers such as the participants in the Birthstrike movement direct public attention to overconsumption as the main driver of climate change, raising “profound questions with respect to responsibilities and ethics in marketing practice” (Hall, 2018, p. 4). Anti-consumption, boycotts, protest, calls for government action to regulate industries, and other possible consequences throw a spanner in the works of capitalism and the dominant marketing paradigm. Moreover, mental health issues in response to climate change also becomes a consumer well-being and quality of life (Macromarketing) issue.